Review: Fright Night (2011)

Las Vegas teen Charlie (Anton Yelchin) gets a visit from geeky former best friend Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who tells him that a friend of theirs has gone missing. Ed (Mintz-Plasse) claims the kid was killed by a vampire. But not just any vampire, no, it was the vampire who just happens to be newly moved in next door to Charlie and his mother Toni Collette! Yelchin doesn’t buy it and continues to snub nerdy Ed in favour of his (surprisingly hot) girlfriend Amy (Imogen Poots). However, when Ed too goes missing, Charlie starts to investigate, and Ed’s suspicions prove right. Mysterious neighbour Jerry (Colin Farrell) is indeed a vampire. In response, Charlie goes to Goth stage magician (yes, you read that correctly) Peter Vincent (David Tennant) for help in defeating the undead blood-sucker.

Being much more a fan of Tom Holland’s subsequent film “Child’s Play” (one of my all-time favourite horror films, I nonetheless like the original “Fright Night” from 1985 well enough (It belongs in the same juvenile/teen horror-comedy oeuvre as “Night of the Creeps”, “The Monster Squad”, and “The Lost Boys”). Thus, I was quite worried about the supposed changes I had heard to be in this 2011 remake from Craig Gillespie (“Lars and the Real Girl”) and writer Marti Noxon (a veteran of TV’s “Buffy”). I’m not beholden to the original. In fact, I think the idea of a remake makes sense, because there was room for improvement. However, the advanced word was troubling to say the least, and the trailer didn’t interest me much, either. Having now watched the film, the issues I thought I’d have with the film certainly cropped up, but amazingly, didn’t quite kill the film. It’s a lesser film, certainly, and watchable at best, but I was expecting so much worse. That it is, even ‘watchable’ is a pleasant surprise in this instance.

 

There’s a fair bit to like about the film, especially the closer it sticks to the tongue-in-cheek original film (Irrelevant side-note: Does anyone else see similarities to “Disturbia” here as well? I see it especially in the roles played by Yelchin, Farrell, Collette, and Mintz-Plasse). An immediately likeable Anton Yelchin (who looks a bit like the original’s William Ragsdale) is terrific and Toni Collette is perfectly fine, though she deserves better than this. I’m not entirely buying Yelchin going from geek to...well, geek with a hot girlfriend who suddenly leaves his geeky pal behind. But hey, a guy can dream, I guess, and Yelchin is a likeable presence on screen, as I said. Meanwhile, no one can play the scene-stealing Evil Ed as memorably as Stephen Geoffreys did in the original, but Christopher Mintz-Plasse (McLovin!) comes as close as anyone possibly could, in perfect casting.

I’m going to say something controversial now: Colin Farrell is actually an improvement over Chris Sarandon (who has a cute cameo here) as the evil vampire, the weakest element of the original. Sarandon was boring and unfunny (trying unsuccessfully for a Christopher Lee or Frank Langella vibe), and thankfully Farrell is having a whale of a time playing what in this film is like the vampire teen rebel- James Dean with fangs! And yet, he doesn’t make it obvious or caricatured. The film also earns points from me for its derogatory treatment of “Twilight”, though it then loses those points for making vampires die a weak-arse sparkly, “Twilight”-esque death (ruining at least one potentially great shock moment). It was no surprise to me to find Howard Berger and Greg Nicotero behind the FX work, they tend to do pretty artificial CGI stuff.

 

I enjoyed the film’s quick pace as we, and the characters, catch on to what is going on rather quickly. There’s also an hilarious joke involving an extremely unorthodox implementation of a wooden stake, which is quite memorable. So these are all good things, and the film mostly follows the original. However, when it strays, it is to the film’s detriment. The characters of Peter Vincent and Evil Ed are somewhat problematic. Peter Vincent, in the original, was a TV horror host played by Roddy McDowell. Such hosts don’t really exist anymore, but this film’s reinterpretation of the character as a Criss Angel-esque Goth magician (played by David Tennant) is a disaster, that ruins one of the very best things about the original. I mean, Peter Vincent was named thusly as a tribute to horror movie legends Peter Cushing and Vincent Price. How the fuck does this relate to a stage magician, then? (Answer: It doesn’t). I get that TV horror hosts are archaic, but narratively, it makes no damn sense to change it to a fucking stage magician. Why would a magician be an expert on vampires? It also robs the film of the real/cinematic vampire slant the original played with. Dr. Who is certainly no compensation for Roddy McDowell, especially when Tennant is playing Russell Brand playing Criss Angel. It’s a wrong idea wrapped up in a wrong idea.

The re-writing of the Evil Ed character is annoying too. The film uses him in a very wonky way, starting off with he and Yelchin not being friends. This might be interestingly different, but all it does is complicate things. Worse still, the role is too small for such an enjoyable character and hilarious performance from Mintz-Plasse.

 

By far the biggest issue with the film is in regards to the cinematography by Javier Aguirresarobe (“The Road”, “Twilight: New Moon”), which is so appallingly murky and underlit in 2D, I shudder to think of how awful it must’ve looked in 3D. He did a great job with a dark palette on “The Road”, but here, something has gone very, very wrong. A lot of the film is drenched in a dark blue filter, which is the worst colour to use when the film is already underlit. You can barely see a thing, and I assume watching it in 3D was like staring at a black screen for 90 odd minutes. But the lighting is wonky in other ways too. When we actually do get rays of light seeping in, they’re in the wrong places and not enough seeps in to make it worth a damn. It results in a smoky haze, suggesting explosives have just been let off, something I remarked about “Action Jackson”. At least that film was bright.

It’s such a shame that this film is so unbearably murky and such cataclysmic character changes have been made. Otherwise, it’s a pretty decent remake of a fun 80s flick, if not as funny as the original. Still, there are moments of fun, and good work by Anton Yelchin and especially Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Colin Farrell. It almost works, and you could do so much worse. But geez, turn on a light, somebody!

 

Rating: C+